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Speech given on April 19, 2007 by Rhonda Hughes at the Farewell Reception for Professor Mary Louise Cookson

            In the immortal words of Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do with it?”  In 1988, Mary Louise Cookson was headed towards a career teaching high school mathematics.  Already a popular teacher at Villanova, she believed the move to Norristown was her calling.  That I was able to persuade her otherwise is in my view my greatest contribution to the College.  If Mary Louise Cookson had chosen to teach high school mathematics at Norristown, countless Bryn Mawr women would have been deprived of their defining moments.  Mary Louise is a teacher of possibility. She broadens the vision of who can and should study mathematics.  Her former students are now doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, physicists, and leaders in business and industry.  She is the master of the qualities most important for a mathematics teacher: clarity and kindness.  Students, particularly women students, often need encouragement in their pursuit of mathematics.  Mary Louise believes that everyone can do it, that it should be fun, and that mathematics provides entrance to an astonishing variety of careers.  The success mathematics has enjoyed here has been shaped by her vision, energy, and passion for her work and her students. Her sparkling ideas and boundless energy have made our house of mathematics a home, populated by a diverse family of bright, engaged students.  As much as Mary Louise is loved and respected by her students, she loves them back.  And that, Ms. Turner, is what love’s got to do with it.

            Five years after I hired Mary Louise, Pat McPherson called me in to tell me that the response to Mary Louise was so profound that she would be awarded the Lindback Award for teaching excellence at Commencement.  As if her immeasurable contributions to mathematics were not enough, she has also had a powerful impact on many of the College’s other programs.  Her long service on the Admissions Committee and her energetic recruitment of students interested in mathematics is legendary; and she has played significant roles on the Undergraduate Council, and the McBride Program. Although she was originally hired to teach courses in the first two years of our curriculum, and manage some administrative duties, the list of her current activities on behalf of the mathematics department is absolutely intimidating.

            Mary Louise loves sports, and she and I have shared many wonderful moments at local sporting events, mostly the Sixers, when they were good.  She also loves football, hockey, and baseball.  In the movie “Field of Dreams,” they say “If you build it, they will come.”  Well, if Mary Louise had not come, we could not have built it.  I just want you to know, ML, that here at Bryn Mawr, you hit the ball out of the park. You are, and always will be, our MVP.